Jon Stewart’s Tuesday night announcement that he’ll be leaving the Daily Show garnered an audible cry of disbelief from his live studio audience. Stewart himself was visibly emotional: “What is this fluid…

Stephen Colbert created an extraordinary character: a right-wing, bloviating pundit who was both outrageous and adorable.
Lucy Nicholson/ReutersDecember 19, 2014

If you were following politics over the last few election cycles, you were most likely getting some of your information from satire. In fact, research has shown that in today’s political climate, satire…

John Oliver’s new program Last Week Tonight is the most recent addition to the parody news genre. Like its predecessors, the show frequently mocks American politics; for example, an attention-grabbing…

The news that Jimmy Kimmel’s contract as host of ABC’s late-night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live! is being extended for two years completes a period of upheaval in this great American genre. Jimmy Fallon…

Will we recognise the “real” Stephen Colbert when he discards his persona to become the host of The Late Show?
EPA/Paul BuckMay 1, 2014

What happens when an actor who has built an amazing persona is called upon to reveal a truer self? When Stephen Colbert, host of The Colbert Report, discards his right-wing talk show host persona and takes…

Some Republicans may be yearning for a return to the gold standard, but the idea has lost its lustre among the vast majority of economists.
Image from www.shutterstock.comAugust 28, 2012

A few years back, mock-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert famously introduced the notion of “truthiness” into the political lexicon. As Colbert put it, truthiness pertains not to whether beliefs are…